One of the perks of covering the beer beat is the periodic email from the Chronicle's shipping department alerting me to a new package awaiting pickup.

After cutting the tape on one of these cardboard boxes last week, for instance, a gorgeous bottle of Stone's new 17th anniversary India pale ale popped out of the packing peanuts. I look forward to getting back to you on that one soon.

The far greater perk is the opportunity to meet the brewing entrepreneurs who put their reputations, not to mention their money, on the line with the audacity to think people might like their beer enough to buy it - and buy enough of it to earn them a living.

Earlier this month was a good case in point. I spent an hour or so talking with David Walker, co-founder of Firestone Walker Brewing Co., as his beers made their Houston debut. I enjoyed the interview, as I inevitably do, and not only because I knew Chronicle readers were going to go crazy for the beers.

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Walker told me at one point that he's always found craft brewers to be "a really cool community." That's been my experience as well. The ones I've met don't seem motivated by riches; indeed, much like journalists, they wear that like a badge of honor. And, also like journalists, now that I think about it, they are keenly interested in telling good stories.

Walker said the Firestone Walker Pale Series, a three-beer lineup at the heart of the brewery's success, tells the story of America's evolving beer scene.

First out was the Double Barrel Ale, a malt-forward beer brewed in the tradition of English pale ales. Next was Pale 31, a dry-hopped version that came to be known as a California style.

Finally, there was the Union Jack IPA, in the higher-alcohol, even hoppier style that has become the most popular in American craft brewing. Walker mused whether it should've been named Old Glory instead.

Consumers have validated his faith in them, he said.

"I would absolutely say, now, America has the most vibrant brewing community in the world," Walker said.

That's a statement that would have been ridiculous when he and his brother-in-law started Firestone Walker in 1996 and the U.S. beer scene was defined by the mass-produced light American lager.

Just a few years earlier, a marketing professor told my MBA class as part of a case study of Pabst Brewing that beer was a mature market, that all beer tasted basically the same and that the only way brands could steal market share from each other was through marketing. Little did he, or we, realize how much that was going to change over the next 20 years.

The craft brewers who led the charge in this revolution did so, I'm sure it seemed at the time, one beer drinker a time.

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"When we started," Walker recalled, "I was prying Foster's cans out of people's hands and watching them cry."

Today, Firestone Walker is the 20th-largest craft brewer in the U.S., and David Walker marvels at the crowds who line up to meet him at grocery and liquor stores to get his autograph on 22-ounce bottles of the brewery's special releases.

"The genie's out of the bottle on locally brewed beer," he said.

True enough, and good for the brewers. But I like to think the successful ones will be those who never stop seeing consumers as individuals.

That's a big part of what struck me about Walker. He talks about things on a human scale. He impressed me with his observation that craft brewers distinguish themselves by not developing beers in their marketing departments.

That's a sentiment even my old marketing professor would appreciate.

Read more: My story based on this David Walker interview ran in the Aug. 17 Business section. If you missed it, you can find it on HoustonChronicle.com.

Brewmasters: In my Aug. 14 piece about the Brewmasters Craft Beer Festival in Galveston, I was off by a day on my dates. The event kicks off this Friday night, with the Brewlicious beer-and-food pairing and the Galveston pub crawl. The main tasting and the smaller gathering of Texas brewers will be on Saturday. Sorry for the confusion.